Society for History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing Conference Recap
For example, in one session I heard a fascinating paper presented by Katherine Grandjean from Wellesley College about her textual research into Cotton Mather's description of Hannah Dustin's story. In March 1697, while living in Haverhill, MA with her husband and eight children, Hannah was kidnapped by Abenaki American Indians. Her newborn daughter and neighbors were murdered. Eventually she escaped after convincing two other victims to help her kill her captors. Her story was retold by Nathanial Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry David Thoreau and was a sensation at the time. She is the first woman in the U.S. honored with a statue, and six of them now dot the Massachusetts and New Hampshire landscape. The use of those stories to create "geographies of fright" was an interesting journey into the use of texts to illuminate life in early colonial times.
- Companies:
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Places:
- Philadelphia
- United States